Sunday, August 21, 2011

10 best car designs

5 comments:

The 300 SL was fine, but I've always been partial to the classic "pagoda roof" SL. Never could afford one, and they needed to go to the shop far too often to suit my practical sensibilities, but I always thought they were the best looking modern sports car. Also partial to the "weirdo" Citroen. Loved the design of the 1950 "Champion" Studebaker. My top car, the '41 dark green 2-door Special Deluxe Chevy "Tank" (1/8" steel plate) given to me by my grandmother!

RR may have a point, but my viewpoint was the same 40 years ago! It's interesting to me that over the past 40 - 60 years, car reliability and operational integrity have increased exponentially. Most cars nowadays routinely cruise well past 100k miles, while I had to do some kind of work on my Chevy about every 200 miles! Of course, I could do most of the work myself. Nowadays, forget that!But for at least the last 20 years cars seem pretty similarly boring, design-wise.

Three or four are dangerous on the freeways. The Citroen is ugly as sin, but a good, reliable piece of transportation. I drove a Jeep in the Army and loved it like a pet horse, but it was very unstable and tended to flip over on sharp turns.

My father's favorite aspect of the original Mini Cooper was the ability, with proper shifting, to make it spin 180 degrees on normal road surfaces within a space barely larger than the turning circle/dimensions of the car itself.

Studebaker and some others would probably make the next ten for a variety of advancements...